Chapter 88 - Demonstrating Trust

  The question of the day seemed to be ‘should I be more furious with the mom for being stupid, or myself for stopping to help?’ Yeah, okay—there were kids who probably didn’t know better involved. And none of the kids had crystals, so they were all still basic humans. The avians would cut them to shreds without help.

  Even so, oh my god, people were stupid.

  The coat wrapped around the bird was adult-sized, so clearly Jess was in on the bird-napping. I whirled on her. “You seriously captured one of their young? Holy shit. Are you trying to get yourself and your children killed?”

  “I was taking care of my family! We’re almost out of food, and scavenging more was already getting harder,” she spat back. “When food falls in your lap, you do what you need to do to feed your children.”

  “Peeps isn’t food, mom! She’s family!” the kid protested.

  His mom and I both ignored him. I glared daggers at her while she did the same back. With her attitude I was halfway ready to just leave her to her fate, but again…kids. I have a soft spot for people too young to know better.

  Idiot adults who ought to know better? Not so much.

  “Selena! They’re coming closer!” Kara shouted from atop Sue.

  She was right. The birds were bringing their army, and they’d be here soon. I shot Jess a glare. “Well, you were right about one thing. You need to let ‘Peeps’ go. Because I am not risking my life to defend you from that.” I pointed at the oncoming wave of avian warriors. “At least, not if you’re so heartless you want to keep that baby away from its parents.”

  That seemed to finally get through to her. She sagged. “We found the baby not far from a dead bird-person. Something had already partly eaten the adult, and it had been dead a while. But the baby was hidden, had survived. I thought at first we could kill it and I’d feed my kids one more day, but then they thought it was cute, and the next thing I knew we had a pet.

  “It kept making noise, and it wasn’t eating the things we tried to feed it. Then the peeping attracted those other…bird things. They attacked the hotel where we were hiding. Set it on fire. I barely got us out in time, and we hid in the car when they swept down at us. If you hadn’t stopped them, we’d be dead now. I’m sorry—I was just trying to do the right thing. I…”

  She trailed off, and my heart softened just a bit. How messed up would I have been, if I’d spent the past week plus taking care of three fairly helpless kids? Saving Alfred and his band had been hard enough, and most of them weren’t completely helpless.

  “All right. Give me the bird,” I said, biting back the harsher words I might have said a few moments before.

  It took a few seconds for Jess to wrestle the baby bird out of her son’s hands, but he finally relented when she explained it had to go back to its family. That, he understood.

  Jess handed me the bundle. The bird was heavier than I’d thought at first, maybe the size of a large chicken or a small turkey. It looked up at me with the biggest, roundest eyes I’d ever seen.

  “Peep?”

  I rolled my eyes. I was not falling for this cute critter.

  But I got why the kids had. It was adorable. The cute little yellow beak meshed well with the fluffy brown and gray feathers, and it was soft to the touch when its down brushed my skin.

  I carried the baby bird away from the car while I sent a mental order to Sue to stand down. The dinosaur’s head lowered, eyes down but still alert. If the bird-people attacked, Sue would blow them to kingdom come, but until then? The avians would have spread word about Sue by now. They knew about the Fireballs, so aiming Sue’s mouth down was essentially a peaceful gesture.

  I hoped.

  “Selena, what are you doing?” Kara called out.

  “Something stupid,” I replied, continuing my slow march away from Sue and the car.

  Once I was about thirty feet from the car, the wave of avians started descending from the sky toward me. All of them stayed at least another few meters away, careful to never approach within what I guessed was their estimate of Sue’s Fireball range. They were pretty accurate, which was concerning in its own way, but something to worry about another day.

  One massive avian landed about ten feet ahead of me, two smaller bird-men dropping to the parking lot pavement right behind him. The followers were both tier three. The leader was tier five. That was the strongest avian I’d seen yet, by a long shot.

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  His feathers were the same dark brown as this baby. I wondered if that meant something. A lot of the birds were white or grey, but he and the baby were both brown. He was larger than the rest, too, standing over six feet tall even with his legs bent in that funny way all the avians stood.

  He wore light armor, which was new to me. The bird-people I’d seen before were mostly naked, just feathers. This one had what looked like chunks of aircraft aluminum armor attached to his shoulders, forearms, and legs. They were clearly captured from the Air Guard people, and then the avians had bent them to fit their own. He wore a massive sword at his side, and a bandolier of knives across his chest.

  A leader of some sort, for sure. But he didn’t seem interested in rushing me, at least so long as I was holding their kid. Maybe it was his kid? Or hers, since I really couldn’t tell genders apart among these things. They were similar color. If this was daddy, maybe I could make this work out well for everyone.

  I gave him a respectful nod, and held out the baby toward him.

  He cocked his head, just like a bird that was curious about something.

  I brought the baby avian close to the ground and gently unwrapped the coat from it. With a few more peeps, the bird finished the job of freeing itself and stepped lightly onto the pavement. I gave it a gentle nudge in the direction of the grownups.

  It turned back toward me, of course, going “Peep! Peep!”

  My eyes rolled so hard I swear I was at risk of them flopping out of my head. Because of course the little rascal was enjoying all the attention. I looked at the tier five avian and shrugged. He looked…almost amused? It was hard to read their body language, but that’s what I thought I was getting.

  I leaned down, careful to keep the tier five avian in my peripheral vision. If he so much as twitched wrong, I was sure Sue would nail him, but I wanted to be ready, too. A foe that strong wouldn’t go down to a single Fireball.

  Hope came up alongside me, snuffling my side, sounding worried. “It’s okay, girl,” I whispered to her. It was nice to have her with me.

  I leaned in, giving the baby bird a gentle nudge in the direction of its people. It peeped again, then finally turned around and saw the big avian. It squawked and started his way, flapping wings and arms alike as it crossed the short distance on stubby, unsteady legs.

  Damn it, the thing really was that cute too. I smiled in spite of myself as I stood back up, dusting off my knees. The baby bird kept running into it reached the big avian’s legs, then smacked into them, wrapping its arms around one.

  Moment of truth time, now… He had his baby back. Would he order his troops to attack, or would he withdraw? I was hoping for the latter, but I had to be ready for the former. If he made a threatening move, I’d drop a Drain Life on him so fast it would make his head spin, and Sue would Fireball him a moment later.

  His gaze went from me, to the dino, then to the baby at his feet. He reached down, picked the child up, cradling it tenderly in his arms, same as I had been a moment before. He looked the baby over, maybe searching for signs of injury? Whatever he was looking for, he seemed satisfied after a brief survey. He shifted the baby to his left arm and stared straight into my eyes.

  Then he gave a proper military salute with his free right hand.

  I was shocked. I’d never seen that behavior, but they clearly had. They’d been fighting the Guard, which meant they’d been observing the Guard, too. They must have discerned that was a gesture of respect, or that was my best guess, anyway. I needed to respond in kind.

  Carefully, slowly, I bent forward at the waist, bowing until my eyes were aimed down at the ground, and I was no longer staring at him. I’d broken eye contact, but even more than that I’d demonstrated trust by letting him out of my line of sight. That was the original point of a bow, after all—to show you weren’t a threat.

  I was hoping he wouldn’t attack. Instead, he did one better and mimicked my bow. The two avians behind him did the same.

  Then with a flash, they were all airborne again, the leader carrying the baby in his arms as his wings swept him skyward. The rest of the avians, which had been circling overhead, formed up behind him, and they all took off toward the northeast again, flying back toward their home at the airport.

  I sagged with relief as they flew away. Everything had gone as well as I could have possibly hoped. We’d gotten the kid back to its people, Jess and her family were safe, and I hadn’t had to fight my way out of the mess. That could have gone so badly, though. If they hadn’t been willing to work it out. If the baby hadn’t been important enough to them to set aside animosity. If the leader had just flown away and then ordered his people to attack once the kid was safe…

  So many ways things could have gone sideways. I turned back toward Kara and flashed her a grin, which she returned.

  “Knew you could do it,” Kara said. “You’re gonna get a rep as an ambassador, you keep this up.”

  “Yeah? This almost turned into an ‘aggressive diplomacy’ bit here,” I replied. But it did feel good. Sometimes there was no choice but to fight. Sometimes, I had to do what needed doing, and in this world it often meant killing someone.

  Even as well as this one went, there were still fatalities. We’d had to kill two of the avians. One was in the fire, and I couldn’t get to the body. But the other was right next to the car. I reached down and tapped it, taking a tier two air crystal into my palm. It was flight, which could be darned useful.

  I wanted to socket it into myself. Flying sounded fun! But I wasn’t quite sure. Finding a space for it wasn’t difficult—I had plenty of slots free, and I wanted those filled before I faced the thing in the mall. But I wanted to play it cautious and use those slots wisely, so I pocketed the crystal for the time being instead.

  Then I turned to Jess. “Please don’t ever do anything like that again, okay?”

  She opened her mouth, and I swore she was about to go full Karen on me. But when her eyes met mine, she must have seen something she didn’t like, because she turned her gaze down toward the ground instead.

  “Yeah. That was dumb. I almost got us all killed.”

  I nodded. “You did. But we’re all learning how to survive this world, so I get it. I’ve done a few bone-headed things myself. Now, how about we get you and your kids somewhere safe?”

  “You’ll still do that? Even after…?”

  “Yup. I’m not leaving you four out here to just die.” I had Sue crouch down low, to make it easier to get everyone aboard. “Help me get the kids on Sue’s back. My dinosaur is big enough to carry all of us, since we’re not going too far. We’ll see you safely to the Guard base before we head on our way.”